India a Mandate for Cleanup and Change

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi gives an interview

Scarcely four years ago, he was a commercial airline pilot without a noticeable trace of political ambition. Two weeks ago, Rajiv Gandhi, 40, who became Prime Minister in late October following the assassination of his mother, Indira Gandhi, won the biggest electoral victory since India's independence in 1947, capturing four-fifths of the seats in the lower house of parliament. Last week he moved quickly to replace some veteran ministers and administrators with a group of young technocrats and prepared to tackle such problems as demands by Sikhs for greater autonomy in the state of Punjab. The Prime Minister was in a...